


The Birthmark

by nyanbacon



Series: Restless Eternity [7]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Depression, Dreams, Existence Dysphoria, Medical, Modern AU, Nurse Tech, Other, Reincarnation, birthmark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24467599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyanbacon/pseuds/nyanbacon
Summary: Jay's mom had pounded the idea that his birthmark was the sign of reincarnation since he was young. As a man of science, he refused to believe it.But now...Now he wasn't sure what to think.---This is a direct continuation of the last one shot, but can be read alone.
Series: Restless Eternity [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552921
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	The Birthmark

Jay's mother had always believed in funky spiritual stuff that explained everyday occurrences. It wasn't always the idea that God was watching over everyone. Sometimes it was the idea that ghosts were messing with the food in the fridge, which explained why the food was moved after Jay's late-night snacking.  
The one that pissed Jay off the most was how much she talked about the birthmark covering half his face. He had heard the idea a million times that a birthmark marked how you died in a past life. Jay, as a man of science, found that hard to believe.  
Living with his mother's crazy, spiritual life had made him hard-wired to hate that sort of stuff. There was so much that he was forced into as a result of it, and he grew up doing everything he could to work against it. He put every ounce of effort forward to get into medical school with the smallest amount of debt possible. His mom wasn't able to support him in these endeavors (and, being more focused on crystals than modern medicine, it made sense that she didn't even want to).  
Despite all his work and research, it was… challenging to get into the workforce, to say the least. He'd always considered getting the birthmark over his eye surgically removed, but the scar would've been more damaging than the birthmark. He also risked losing his eyesight in that eye, which would severely hinder his ability to go into surgery like he so desired. And, of course, his mom wouldn't let him remove something that made him 'special' and 'unique'.  
He'd spent all of his life undergoing discrimination for it, and he was one more interview away from losing his shit over a lost job opportunity.  
But then he got a job as a nurse tech, and suddenly he felt okay. He got along with his coworkers. Eventually, they stopped focusing on his mismatched eyes. They focused more on his jokes, or his rather large pool of knowledge, considering his lowly role as a nurse tech.  
He was rarely ever given enough time to get acquainted with patients before they were released back into the world. After just six months of working at the hospital, he stopped remembering the names of the people that came in. One day they were there, and the next they were gone.  
Well... except for one.  
Zane Julien.  
Zane was clearly accident-prone and came in a lot for various trauma injuries: fractures, concussions, and several ruptured organs. Zane didn't talk much, but he did have a lot of visitors. People thanked Zane for the work he did, left flowers and gifts, and often paid for the medical bills. Jay wasn't sure what work he did, but he contemplated telling Zane that maybe he should quit if he got this injured.  
The longer Jay worked at the hospital, the worse Zane got. He wasn't a constant patient, not like some of the chemotherapy patients were. But he came a lot, enough that Jay was able to watch the way Zane deteriorated.  
He'd never had a patient die on him. He was never in the room, and usually, it wasn't even his patients. Jay had lulled himself into a false sense of security when it came to not remembering patients, and therefore not getting attached to them. He'd never thought about how hard Zane's death would hit him. It had never occurred to him he'd be there when Zane died.  
But he was, and there was something gut-wrenching about it. He didn't know Zane very well. He still didn't know how Zane had gotten hurt all those times he'd come in. So why did this hurt so bad?  
That night, Jay had a dream. Jay never believed in the power of dreams, not like his mom did, but this was... different. It was like he was reliving the loss of Zane over and over and over again. One moment Zane was there, and the next, he was gone. Dead. Or missing? Jay couldn't tell.  
There were others there. People he didn't recognize as patients. He knew how the brain worked, and the fact that only faces he knew would ever show up in a dream, but he swore on his life that these faces he didn't recognize. And they were hurting, like him, over Zane's death.  
After Zane's death, he had a week off, and he spent a lot of time sleeping, chasing after the people in his dreams. When he got close to finding something, though, and excited at the prospect of getting answers, the dream would fade to black and slip through the cracks, and he'd wake up more confused than before.  
And then he lost his eye.  
He couldn't remember how, but he woke up with a searing pain behind his birthmark, and he lay in bed with spots dancing in his vision for hours. Zane had been there, and so had been the other two. As much as he didn't want to face the idea, he had to consider...  
Had his mom been right?  
Was the birthmark related to a past life?  
Believing it undid... everything he'd constructed his world around. All the science he'd used to protect himself collapsed around him, and he didn't return to work after his week was up.  
He didn't go back to work at all.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's some drawings I made of what Jay looks like with his birthmark](https://nyanbacon-art.tumblr.com/post/611876092213641216/when-someone-is-reborn-in-a-new-life-it-is)


End file.
